Digital Signing for multiple affiliates

nunoborges · Post by **nunoborges** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:22 am

Digital signing will confirm that the installation package is geniunely from vendor 'x', but if this vendor's product is distributed through a number of different affiliates, how would you guys embed a referral code into the installation process without affecting the digital signing? This referral code is important for the affiliate to receive their commission on each download from their site.

Is there something we can do within InstallAware that will allow us to dynamically fetch this code?
-URL querystring where you downloaded the install
-embedding the code in the name of the file itself
-other mechanisms?

Any suggestions are appreciated,

Nuno

MichaelNesmith · Post by **MichaelNesmith** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 4:25 pm

The easiest and most direct way seems to be manipulating the file name. You can read the file name and parse it and then credit the appropriate reseller.

Any other solution may require download time server processing on the actual file, which would be costly at best.

nunoborges · Post by **nunoborges** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 5:05 pm

Thanks for the quick reply Michael.

I'm hoping that by your response you were inferring that InstallAware will know it's own filename during the installation process. In which case, i would greatly appreciate it if someone could point out the relevant property, cuz we haven't found it yet.

Thanks again,

Nuno

MichaelNesmith · Post by **MichaelNesmith** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 5:17 pm

Check out the list of pre-defined variables in the help file. Lots of useful stuff in there. The stuff that'll be interesting for you is:

CMDLINE: The command line string passed to the installation program.
EXEDIR: The folder containing the setup executable itself.
EXEFILE: The full path and file name of the setup executable.
GPOPATH: If an uncompressed directory layout is used, this variable is empty. If setup has not been deployed through Group Policy, this variable is empty. Otherwise set to the full path of the folder containing the Single File MSI that started the current installation.
MSIFILE: The full path and file name of the setup installation database.
SFXFILE: If an uncompressed directory layout is used, this variable is empty. Otherwise set to the file name of the self extracting executable which bootstrapped the installer.
SFXPATH: If an uncompressed directory layout is used, this variable is empty. Otherwise set to the full path of the folder containing the self extracting executable which bootstrapped the installer.

nunoborges · Post by **nunoborges** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 5:34 pm

I was just about to post that i found that.

My only remaining confusion is from a different location in the helpfile.

"The EXEFILE variable, and other variables which refer to the running setup program, will refer to the InstallAware IDE executable file itself. "

This sounds like the original filename that was created by installaware IDE. Does this mean that it won't capture the newly renamed file (with referrer code)? We are trying to avoid having to create multiple installation packages for each affiliate, but if we can rename these EXEs dynamically and pick up the referral code at InstallTime, then this mechanism will work.

Cheers,

Nuno

nunoborges · Post by **nunoborges** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 4:40 pm

We just confirmed the expected behaviour. EXEFILE will grab the filename of the installer EXE at install_time, despite having renamed the file after the packaging process. Sounds obvious, but i've learned not to take these things for granted.

All done. C'est tout. Thanks again for the assistance.

Nuno

MichaelNesmith · Post by **MichaelNesmith** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:13 pm

I'd think you want SFXFILE actually. Aren't you using a single file or web compressed setup?